Photographing birds in Ontario and Quebec

I enjoy photographing birds, and been having increasing luck doing so with my new 70-200mm lens. I think it might be a good project to collect images of birds that congregate around Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal, use them as photos of the day, and identify their species.

Can anyone put a name to the unknowns above? I will try to come up with some new bird photos during the next week or so.

P.S. Has anyone tried the Canon 1.4X or 2.0X teleconverters? Does either work with the f/4 70-200mm zoom (I remember the box saying the lens is compatible with them). Do the focusing and metering systems still work properly, despite the lost 1-2 f-stops?

BIRDNET provides information for and about ornithology, the scientific study of birds. The site serves professional ornithologists and the general public. BIRDNET is provided by the Ornithological Council, a public information organization established and supported by eleven Western Hemisphere ornithological societies.

VIREO is a library of ornithological photographs founded within The Academy of Natural Sciences in 1979 to provide the research and educational community with fine bird photographs, and to provide a scientifically-curated collection to commercial users.

1. Looks like a gray warbler – hard to say without hearing their song… Though from the lack of colouring it could be a female (normally the males have the brighter colours…)… definitely the shape of a warbler.

3. A starling…

4. Indeed it is a house sparrow…

If you want to photograph birds, go to Mud Lake near Britannia Bay Park here in Ottawa (easily accessible via the Ottawa River bike path), it is a birder’s mecca (over 100 species of birds in the small area)… and the odds are very good you will also come across at least one, and probably multiple fellow photographers. Having went this past weekend I saw someone with a D3 and 500mm F4 Nikkor… The thing was a beast (not to mention its a $8-10k lens!) I also saw a black crested night heron, very cool.

The WhatBird Make-a-Guide (MAG) allows you to create an unlimited number custom field guides which can be downloaded and printed on a color printer. Books are based on the content in the Whatbird database of over 1000 species.

I meant the black throated gray warbler… which is decidedly different than Milan’s photo. I thought the bird in the photo was smaller than it must gave been, as I can now identify it, thanks to the wife to be…

I described the photo to her and she immediately thought it was a catbird… when I had a chance to show her the photo she said it definitely was… then went and got out her well worn Peterson field guide (en français no less) and we found it, moqueur chat… (a gray catbird specifically, Dumetella carolinensis )…

Interestingly enough, its a common enough bird but your photo doesn’t show the part where a rust-coloured patch, sometimes, but not always, is under the tail feathers. Perhaps that is what was stumping the online identifier? Take that fancy internet identification site!

Once again though, the song (if you can call its shriek that) would be a dead give away. It was called a catbird for a reason! ;-)